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We're hearing about troubles at Nest

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Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#31

Post by IgorPartola »

Eiriksmal wrote: post #27
nostromo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nest thermostat is a dream compared to the smoke detector. The smoke detector goes off all the time -- without rhyme or reason. With a normal detector, you can just pull the battery if it refuses to shut off. With Nest, you actually need a screw driver to open the battery compartment to turn it off. So, when it decides to wake up the entire house at 3am (yes, the entire house, since they all go off in unison) you…

That's a horrible experience. But, to be fair, many newer structures have all their smoke detectors wired together so when one goes off, they all go off. I experienced that in my house, built in '97, which was extremely disorienting and stressful when it first happened. Growing up in a house built in the 80s, only the kitchen's smoke detector would go off if you burned something. I understand the perceived safety enh…

This is why I like the FirstAlert wireless detectors: mesh network so they all go off, but you program each one to announce with a voice which room the trouble is in. They even announce which one has the low battery instead of chirping in the middle of the night.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#32

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

jarek wrote: post #24
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #12

Inevitablities from the Internet of things: Software glitches, personal data sold or served to the government, personal data stolen by a foreign government, hackers that freeze your house or crank up the heater till it breaks, hackers that spy on your kids with the cameras you installed, automated customer support lines. For some reason I get the feeling that adopting all of these "smart" devices actually makes me mo…

> For some reason I get the feeling that adopting all of these "smart" devices actually makes me more vulnerable to risk and gives me less control over my life. Oh, of course it does. Consider: when are you more in control, when you know the city you're in inside-out, or when you're depending on Google Maps?

Well, lemme think...

2012, October. I, an American from upstate NY, am traveling on the Queen Elizabeth Way to visit a friend in Toronto, a city I last saw at the age of 3. There are at least 6 lanes on the highway, packed with drivers so cantankerous and forceful that save for the autumn gray I could swear I was in LA.

I'm approaching the city and a display by the road says the route is closed for construction. My maps app redirects me to another highway, which is completely closed after 15 miles of driving. Another redirect, all while forcing my way through the automobile equivalent of a massive hockey team.

Suffice to say, I didn't know the city, and I didn't have the chance to unfold a map.

The only part that was out of my control was the $300 in roaming charges.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#33

Post by nommm-nommm »

Eiriksmal wrote: post #23
atonse wrote: post #8

I have a nest and it is a real piece of shit. I usually don't curse on HN but I can barely contain my hate for this product. My absolutely ugly, crappy old thermostat with a needle on it works WAY better than the nest (thankfully we have it upstairs where we sleep). When it's cold, we turn that needle up, and we get warm. With the nest, which is downstairs, when we're cold, we turn the nest up, we get weird "+2 hour"…

Your comments are worrying, but match a disappointing number of other users. When I was ready to switch to a programmable thermostat to save money, I really, really wanted to like the Nest. It was cool, whizzbang, etc., etc. But then I started reading the 1-star reviews on Amazon, and the support forums. And it worried me. People came home to apartments that were 90* because their heaters were stuck on full blast dur…

>I expected very little from Honeywell, who I regard as a quaint, old-skool company.

Honeywell has been in business for 110 years. If you are in business that long you gotta be doing something right! I would assume.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#34

Post by asdfologist »

outside1234 wrote: post #11

I worked there. It was literally the worst experience of my career - and I have worked at all of the hardest charging blue chips and two successful startups - so it is not about high expectations - but abuse. I still wake up with something like PTSD occasionally from getting yelled at and bullied by Tony Fadell almost literally every day while I was there. I have a distance from it now -- and a way better job. It mad…

Honest question: how did someone with such an abusive management style lead his company to success? I'd think that his employees would just leave and go work elsewhere.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#35

Post by njs12345 »

outside1234 wrote: post #26
brandon272 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still wake up with something like PTSD from getting yelled at and bullied by Tony Fadell. This is so depressing. My gut tells me that absolutely no one should have to put up with this in an employment situation, but what are your options, other than to either "deal with it" or face the income and career insecurity that comes with quitting?

The really great thing about being in software in Silicon Valley is that you can more or less write your own meal ticket somewhere else. My advice to anyone else in this situation is to do just that. The first time abuse happens, just walk out, have a laugh about it (it reflects on them not you), and find another gig. There are a lot of great jobs out there. I have a lot of empathy now for all the crummy jobs where p…

I would second that. Not in SV, in London, but I had a similar experience with an abusive work environment.

Stayed way too long and some of my shares vested. Now they're worth some money on paper, but it wasn't worth it - my advice for anyone in a similar situation would be to get out as early as possible.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#36

Post by heywire »

atonse wrote: post #8

I have a nest and it is a real piece of shit. I usually don't curse on HN but I can barely contain my hate for this product. My absolutely ugly, crappy old thermostat with a needle on it works WAY better than the nest (thankfully we have it upstairs where we sleep). When it's cold, we turn that needle up, and we get warm. With the nest, which is downstairs, when we're cold, we turn the nest up, we get weird "+2 hour"…

I actually chose a competing product, the Sensi Thermostat from Emerson, after reading so many complaints like this. While it doesn't have the fancy learning capabilities of the Nest, it does have full scheduling capability, which I actually prefer. The mobile apps work great, and I've even written some small utilities to monitor their API so I can get some email alerts on certain interesting events. Aside from a couple small outages with the mobile app / website, I've had zero problems with the HVAC functions.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#37

Post by dboreham »

asdfologist wrote: post #34
outside1234 wrote: post #11

I worked there. It was literally the worst experience of my career - and I have worked at all of the hardest charging blue chips and two successful startups - so it is not about high expectations - but abuse. I still wake up with something like PTSD occasionally from getting yelled at and bullied by Tony Fadell almost literally every day while I was there. I have a distance from it now -- and a way better job. It mad…

Honest question: how did someone with such an abusive management style lead his company to success? I'd think that his employees would just leave and go work elsewhere.

Because behaving like this is moderately correlated with success. You don't have to be an asshole to succeed in business, but it can help.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#38

Post by nommm-nommm »

The problem with "smart" anything is that the more features you add the more places there is to break.

The coffee maker in my office has a color touch screen. What advantage is a color touch screen over a "dumb" mechanical switch? None, but I am sure its more likely to break and much more expensive to fix/replace.

Yes, the touch screen has one button - make coffee. Then it plays animations while your coffee is brewing. Then it says "coffee done."

In my opinion smart features should be added very sparingly and fill an actual need not just "oh, cool" or "cuz we could." Otherwise I'd pick the "dumb" version every time.

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#39

Post by notwhereyouare »

brandon272 wrote: post #10
demian0311 wrote: post #7

I have Nest thermostat and a Nest camera. Thermostat is in the hallway and regularly thinks nobody is home. Camera knows I'm home because of movement (or I should be able to show it how to tell). But the Camera doesn't talk to the thermostat. You create a dependency when devices connect to the Internet and you may give up some privacy. In return I assume you'd get some intelligence and integration.

My #1 issue my Nest is that my house is always freezing in the winter because it always thinks I'm not home as I might be home but not necessarily walk in front of the thermostat routinely. Hence it switches to "Auto Away" mode. It would be nice if the Nest app I had on my phone could identify that I'm home (i.e. am I connected to my home WiFi network, or check my location via GPS) and then communicate that to my the…

I saw an app on the play store a while back that did exactly that. It worked with the nest API and your phone, you said what wifi's and what areas and it pinged the nest to keep it in home mode.

It's called Away Smarter on the google play store.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.geeksville...

Re: We're hearing about troubles at Nest

#40

Post by dperfect »

atonse wrote: post #8

I have a nest and it is a real piece of shit. I usually don't curse on HN but I can barely contain my hate for this product. My absolutely ugly, crappy old thermostat with a needle on it works WAY better than the nest (thankfully we have it upstairs where we sleep). When it's cold, we turn that needle up, and we get warm. With the nest, which is downstairs, when we're cold, we turn the nest up, we get weird "+2 hour"…

Not sure if it's the same problem, but a few months after getting my Nest it started ignoring my adjustments as well.

After some investigation, I found that it had automatically set up a bunch of temperature schedules without my knowledge (I guess it thought it was smart and could learn my weekly patterns from my past usage). That's all fine if it actually cared to take my manual adjustments more seriously than trusting its own "intelligence," but I'm pretty sure it just thought my adjustments were irrelevant suggestions :)

Anyway, after clearing all the schedules that it added (and turning off auto-schedule in the settings), it now works as I would expect.

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